Republicans: Celebration allows state party faithful to meet kindred spirits
Donald Trump wasn’t Hilary Hagenbuch’s first choice for president. The San Franciscan was, admittedly, “a Romney girl.” But even though the former Massachusetts governor’s 2016 campaign didn’t materialize, Hagenbuch wasn’t a never-Trumper and eventually supported her party’s nominee.
Her reward: She is packing four — at least — swanky gowns for the inaugural balls and events she plans to attend this week in Washington, D.C. Those include one soiree she’s organizing.
Not surprisingly, there won’t be a lot of Bay Area residents joining her. Trump got 9 percent of the vote in San Francisco, around 15 percent in Alameda and Marin counties, close to 20
percent in the South Bay and 32 percent statewide. San Francisco Republican Party Chairman Jason Clark knows of “maybe a dozen” San Franciscans going — he isn’t one of them.
But that also explains the joy of those heading to Washington, even people like Hagenbuch who didn’t ride the campaign on the Trump train. Being in Washington this week for a Bay Area Republican is about the joys of spending a rare few days among kindred political spirits. About not being afraid to wear your campaign gear in public or telling someone you meet in a bar that you’re a Republican.
“I grew up behind enemy lines here in San Francisco,” said Hagenbuch, who leads the local Young Republicans group and is active in the state party, too. “It will be very exciting to be among other people like me, politically.”
But a Republican from San Francisco stands out among her fellow party members. Hagenbuch served as the witness when her two godfathers got married at San Francisco City Hall after being together for 40 years. “The old joke you hear is that a Republican from here,” she said, “is like a Democrat anywhere else.”
Megan Range wasn’t initially a Trump supporter, either, but she’s headed to Washington. As the executive director of the Lincoln Club of Northern California — a moderate, pro-business group whose members have donated $50 million to mostly California GOP candidates over the past decade — Range knows how lonely it can be for Republicans in this part of the state. That’s why she’s excited to see friends from Texas, Arkansas and elsewhere.
For her, being at the inauguration will pack the same joys as being at July’s Republican National Committee in Cleveland.
“I get to go into a bar and see someone I know and not get into a fight with people” over politics, she said.
Among the hot tickets for Californians this week will be the Liberty Ball, hosted by 13-term California Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, who was on Trump’s short list to be secretary of state. Tickets — at $250 apiece — for the Friday event featuring guitarist Dave Mason at the Library of Congress are sold out.
“People feel there has been this dark cloud over us for eight years, and now the sun is shining,” said Jason Pitkin, a Orange County fundraiser and political consultant who is helping to produce the Liberty Ball.
Other Californians will be seeking red state refuge at the $300-a-ticket Black Tie and Boots Ball, sponsored by the Texas State Society. It will provide them a few hours of respite before they return home to a state where Republicans hold no statewide offices and are a minority in the state Legislature.
“As a Republican in California, we don’t get a lot of opportunity to celebrate victories. So I’ll travel all the way across the country to celebrate a victory,” said Harmeet Dhillon, the San Francisco attorney who is a national committeewoman to the Republican National Committee. Trump’s victory “was a repudiation of the direction that our country was going in.”
The victory meant something extra special to Santa Clara resident Juan Hernandez.
While wearing a red “Make America Great Again” cap, protesters beat him up as he left a June 2 Trump campaign rally at the San Jose Convention Center. After he went public with his complaints about how San Jose police handled the situation — he and several others have sued the city for failing to protect them — many people approached him and, often in a hushed voice, confided to Hernandez that they were voting for Trump.
“It felt so liberating to say that I was a Republican Trump supporter,” said Hernandez, 38. It felt even more liberating to him when people found out he was a gay Latino Republican Trump supporter. The vast majority of Latinos, largely because of Trump’s desire to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, supported Clinton.
But going public with his political beliefs also created a lot of personal blowback for Hernandez. Many people told him they couldn’t believe a gay person or a Latino could support Trump.
That said, Hernandez was somewhat surprised that he “received so much more acceptance in my own party than I thought I would, from around the nation.” He looks forward to reconnecting with many of those people he sees this week in Washington.
“And that’s why — after all the blood, sweat and tears — that it’s going to be even sweeter to see Mr. Trump put his hand on that Bible and take the oath of office,” he said. “It will make it all worthwhile.”
Corrin Rankin will appreciate that camaraderie, too, when she travels to the inauguration. The Redwood City resident supported Trump from the moment he announced his candidacy. As the owner of a bail-bond company, she wanted to see a business executive in the White House.
And while she acknowledged that it can be lonely for Trump supporters in the Bay Area, she said she didn’t feel any particular isolation being the California state chairwoman for African Americans for Trump. Nearly 9 of 10 black voters supported Democrat Hillary Clinton.
“I don’t see it as being any different,” Rankin said. “Everywhere you go around here — whether people are black or white or Hispanic — chances are most people are Democrats.”